1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wall-mounted microwave oven, and more particularly, to a wall-mounted microwave oven including an air guide to feed hot air to a cooking chamber.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a wall-mounted microwave oven is mounted over another cooling appliance such as a gas oven installed on a kitchen sink in a kitchen space. Such a wall-mounted microwave oven not only performs a cooking function using microwaves, similarly to that of general microwave ovens, but also performs a function for externally exhausting fumes, smoke or smell of food rising from another cooling appliance during a cooking operation for the food.
Similarly to general microwave ovens, a wall-mounted microwave oven includes a cooking chamber and an electric element chamber partitioned in the interior of an oven body defining the appearance of the microwave oven, to cook food in the cooking chamber. Exhaust passages are defined between facing walls of the oven body and cooking chamber and between facing walls of the oven body and electric element chamber, respectively. The microwave oven also includes an exhaust fan arranged at a rear upper portion of the oven body, and communicating with the exhaust passages. With this configuration, the microwave oven can suck fumes, smoke and food odor rising beneath the oven body through the exhaust passages in accordance with an operation of the exhaust fan, and then exhaust them to the exterior.
For such a wall-mounted microwave oven, a convection type microwave oven has been known. The present invention relates to a convection type microwave oven. As disclosed in Korean Utility Model No. 20-0327751, such a convection type microwave oven includes an electric heater for generating heat by use of electric resistance, and a convection fan, which are arranged in a rear of a cooking chamber. With this configuration, the convection type microwave oven not only has a food cooking function using microwaves, as in general microwave ovens, but also directly heats the surface of food by use of heat generated from the electric heater, thereby reducing the cooking time while efficiently achieving the cooking operation.
In such a conventional microwave oven, however, air is supplied into the cooking chamber before being sufficiently heated by the heater because the convection fan is mounted to a heater casing in a rear of the electric heater such that it is arranged just near the electric heater. For this reason, there is a problem in that the temperature of the supplied hot air is low, so that the cooking efficiency of the microwave oven is degraded.
Furthermore, the hot air is introduced, at a time, into the cooking chamber through an inlet arranged in front of the heater. For this reason, the hot air has a low flow rate, so that it circulates ineffectively in the cooking chamber. As a result, there are problems of a large loss of heat and an increased cooking time.